Observations on politics, news, culture and humor

Russian “spy” megapost

For the second straight day, one of the leading stories in the American press has been the FBI’s takedown of a Russian deep-cover spy ring. The more I learn about this story, the less I care. Yes, the stories of these “spies” are interesting and figuring out America’s interest in handling this case this way is even more interesting, but the information they were looking to gather sounds more and more mundane by the minute. If I were a paranoid loon who was really concerned with the “Russian menace,” I think I’d be glad that Russia chose to waste wads of money supporting and establishing spies tasked with gathering information they could have gotten just as easily online.

Via the Daily Beast, the Boston Globereports on the annoyingly type A-ish networking habits of the spy couple based in MA.

Via Slog, the Seattle Times gives a snapshot of the spy couple based in Seattle. I’m shocked that anyone ever picked these two to be spies, given their extremely erratic behavior.

NYT reports on the same MA couple mentioned before. I liked this story more than the rest.

NYT covers reactions from Putin and other top Russian officials. Ex-KGB man Putin criticized the arrests.

NYT tells us about the role of deep-cover “illegals” in Soviet and Russian intelligence. Seems the spy handlers may have gotten sloppier since ’91.

Via the Daily Beast, NYT writes about the information these people were tasked with gathering. Like I said, it was pretty boring and trivial stuff.

The AP talks to a former KGB man who suspects there might be up to 50 similar couples operating in the U.S. Yawn.

Moscow Timesprofiles Anna Chapman, the supposedly sexy spy. We seem to know more about her life in Russia at this point than we do for the others.

Moscow Timesruns down reactions from inside Russia. Interesting only for the speculation of a former KGB guy who thinks the arrests could have been timed to embarrass Obama so soon after meeting Medvedev and keep U.S.-Russia relations from getting too close.